Pope’s climate-change stand deepens conservatives’ distrust

The pellegrina of Pope Francis is lifted by a gust of wind during his general audience at St Peter's square on Thursday. Francis is pushing for pastoral change but not doctrinal changes.

Photo: VINCENZO PINTO / Vincenzo Pinto / AFP / Getty Images

NEW YORK — Conservative distrust of Pope Francis, which has been building in the United States throughout his pontificate, is reaching a boiling point over his plan to urge action on climate change — and to do so through a document traditionally used for the most important papal teachings.

For months, Francis has been drafting an encyclical on the environment and global warming that he hopes to release by June or July. In a news conference as he traveled last week to the Philippines, Francis gave his strongest signal yet of the direction he’ll take.

He said global warming was “mostly” man-made. And he said he wanted his encyclical out in plenty of time to be absorbed before the next round of U.N. climate change talks in Paris in November.

“I don’t know if it (human activity) is the only cause, but mostly, in great part, it is man who has slapped nature in the face,” Francis said.

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Other developments

Not 'like rabbits’ — Pope Francis is firmly upholding church teaching banning contraception, but he said Monday that Catholics don’t have to breed “like rabbits” and should instead practice “responsible parenting.” Speaking to reporters en route home from the Philippines, Francis said there are plenty of church-approved ways to regulate births. But most importantly, he said, no outside institution should impose its views on regulating family size, blasting what he called the “ideological colonization” of the developing world.

Large Mass — Francis flew out of the Philippines, a Catholic bastion in Asia, on Monday after a weeklong trip that included a visit to Sri Lanka and drew what Filipino officials say was a record crowd of 6 million faithful in a Manila park where he celebrated Mass.

Compassion for the poor — Though Francis has left the Philippines, his message of compassion for the poor and the need to end the corruption that sustains their suffering will continue to resonate in a country where a quarter of the population lives on less than $1.25 a day.

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Several conservative U.S. commentators have pre-emptively attacked the encyclical. At Investor’s Business Daily, Forbes and TownHall.com, writers have accused the pope of adopting a radical environmental agenda.

“Pope Francis — and I say this as a Catholic — is a complete disaster when it comes to his public policy pronouncements,” wrote Steve Moore, chief economist of The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. “On the economy, and even more so on the environment, the pope has allied himself with the far left and has embraced an ideology that would make people poorer and less free.”

At the website of the Catholic journal First Things, a blogger accused the pope of promoting “theologized propaganda” on conservation — a post the journal’s editor later disavowed — and published guidance by prominent Catholic thinker Robert George about what should be considered authoritative in an encyclical and what could be ignored.

“For the most part, they are conservatives who have criticized other Catholics in the past for disagreeing with definitive statements in papal encyclicals.” said David Cloutier, a theologian at Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland who specializes in the environment. “They’re scared that the document is going to say something definitive that they can’t agree with.”